WESPAC decisions nullified

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council has voted to prohibit purse seine fishing throughout the exclusive economic zone surrounding the CNMI during a council meeting held on Saipan Thursday and Friday.

This decision, however, including all other decisions relating to Guam and Hawaii fishing, is now in question after WESPAC reportedly failed to give proper notice of the meeting with the Federal Register prior to the event.

This means that the Council must redo their March 17-18 meeting all over again, according to a Pacific Daily News report yesterday, quoting WESPAC member Manny Duenas.

All decisions made at the meeting are nullified, Duenas told PDN. Duenas said notice of the meeting was lost in translation.

“Somewhere in the communication network, it fell through a crack,” he said in the PDN article. “We are not sure whose fault this is. We even question if the council needs to be reimbursed for the cost of this re-meeting.”

To save on costs, Duenas told PDN that the replacement meeting will be held by teleconference, or in Hawaii. It has not yet been scheduled.

A Western & Central Pacific Network statement reported the same issue, saying that the Guam and Saipan meetings cost an estimated $50,000 to $60,000.

“All business conducted during the Wespac meeting…will have to be redone…not including the cost of another meeting. At this writing, it is not clear why. As this was not an official meeting of Wespac, there will need to be a new meeting before the scheduled 141st meeting,” said the Network statement.

In the meantime, a new Federal Register notice must be published at least 21 days before the meeting, explaining the problem, and noting that all records of this meeting will be on file at Council library before that meeting for anyone to review.

This information may or may not appear on the WESPAC Web site http://www.wpcouncil.org. After the official notice, the Council will then meet again in Honolulu to vote anew on all actions items. The new meeting is expected to be quite truncated, with minimal discussion, full opportunity for public comment, and then voting.

“What does this all mean? At a minimum, this would allow supporters of the proposed CNMI Monument to refute misinformation generated by WESPAC, and it also puts purse seine exclusion zones passed for Guam and Saipan in jeopardy. Bottom line, WESPAC administers the wild caught fish stocks similarly: all are either experiencing overfishing, currently overfished or collapsed and closed. Not a good record,” the Network statement said.

In its decision to prohibit purse seine fishing in the CNMI, the council said they were concerned that the revitalization of the U.S. purse seine fleet, combined with the likely constraints on purse seine fishing effort in the Western and Central Pacific, may lead to increased interest by U.S. purse-seiners to fish in the U.S. EEZ surrounding the entire Mariana Archipelago.

It is also likely that new vessels augmenting the U.S. purse seine fleet will be based primarily in the far west of the region in Micronesia, the council said.

Earlier in the week, the Council voted on a similar purse-seine area closure for U.S. EEZ waters surrounding Guam.

There were also concerns expressed by Council members about purse seining close to seamounts due to their propensity to aggregate juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tunas, important to artisanal and scale fisheries for pelagic fishes.

The council pointed out that seamounts, especially shallow ones, “are also important fishing grounds for bottomfishing for snappers and groupers in the EEZs surrounding American Samoa, Guam, and CNMI.”

Seamounts are biological hotspots in the ocean with high species diversity.

For these reasons, other countries in the region such as Papua New Guinea have specifically prohibited purse seine fishing close to seamounts in their EEZs.

The council also voted to establish a 30 nm longline fishing exclusion zone in the U.S. EEZ surrounding the CNMI.

The CNMI council members and members of council advisory committees who had met the previous week arrived at the 30 nm recommendation to protect the small scale troll fisheries in the CNMI, while at the same time encouraging the development of a locally based longline fishery.

When it meets in June 2008, the Council will consider establishing a control date of March 20, 2008, which may be used in the future to limit further entry of longline vessels to fish around the U.S. EEZ waters surrounding CNMI.

The Council also supported the Government of CNMI’s request that a Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s master-fisherman assist CNMI-based longline vessels in improving their performance and to provide more information on the potential of pelagic resources in the US EEZ surrounding the Marianas Archipelago.